P61a flame issues

[xjarcher]

Smoky

No I'm venting East and our prevailing wind is W-SW here.
Switched to Stove today and with night temps in 20's I went through a bag in 7 hours. Flame was similar to before, house was about same temp(plenty warm) We will have similar temps today so I'm going back to Room temp to see how it burns today. With these temps I should be around 11 hours per bag.

 

[kayakmom]

Husband reported this morning that he turned off the stove and turned it back on with the room temp setting and turned feed up to 3. He said it's looking good. Outside temp is up to 25 and my bedroom was 67 this morning! Woohoo!

Last year's trials basically showed that around 20 degrees, this stove cannot keep up alone. Now that it's back up over that temp outside, it's fine. It was designed for max 2600 sf, I believe, and we have 3,200 sf, not to mention that about 15' from the stove are two 10' x 15' walls of floor to ceiling windows and 8 skylights (Don't ask!) Thiis house is a design disaster when it comes to maintaining temps. Curtains for those walls cost 3k so they're not even close to being in the budget yet. I'm still working on a home fix for that.

Our lazy flame issue seems to be corrected. Thank you!

I will wait to see how long a bag lasts for you today, xjarcher.

 

[xjarcher]

Kayakmom,
We got between 9.5 and 10 on the bag this morning, Temps for the day in mid 20's with good brisk west winds. Definitely better on Room. I agree with the <20* concept. We have had a long string of days in the teens and it is barely adequate at that level. BTW I'm about 2600 sq.ft. on 3 floors with the stove in the basement. My windows are awful and I have window film on all of them to help out. Rest of the house is R19. I like the stove but when the budget allows I'll go to a dual fuel boiler (house has hot water heat that we don't use) and either sell it or keep it for a back up and to add ambiance in the basement. I may try messing with the feed rate when we get another cold snap next week. More news soon.

 

[GVA]

Lazy flame means, lack of airflow.
Causes
Restriction on outlet= clean pipe
Restriction on inlet= check for free movement of flapper
Combustion blower weak dirty or dying causing low draft.= perform draft test
dirty stove= clean stove
really poor pellet= blocking airflow through burnpot with clinkers
Leaky gaskets keeping the negative draft low

FWIW
airflow (draft) is created by combustion blower
air is drawn through intake
air flows through burnpot holes and airwash for glass
air goes across heat exchangers
air goes out the exhaust pipe.
slow the flow at any point and you get a lazy flame.................
Lazy flame looks like a candle flame, kinda dancing around slowly
now gently blow at the candle and the flame starts to dance wildly, that is what the flame should look like.
Hope this helps.

EDIT I should add
if it is really cold and your stove is having a hard time keeping up the temp,
switching it to stove temp is the equivelent of putting a wood burning stove on, it will jusst pump out a steady amount of BTU's.
I used to say
room temp= temp control like a central heating system.
stove temp=temp like a wood burning stove

 

[xjarcher]

Lazy flame means, lack of airflow.
Causes
Restriction on outlet= clean pipe
Restriction on inlet= check for free movement of flapper
Combustion blower weak dirty or dying causing low draft.= perform draft test
dirty stove= clean stove
really poor pellet= blocking airflow through burnpot with clinkers
Leaky gaskets keeping the negative draft low

FWIW
airflow (draft) is created by combustion blower
air is drawn through intake
air flows through burnpot holes and airwash for glass
air goes across heat exchangers
air goes out the exhaust pipe.
slow the flow at any point and you get a lazy flame.................
Lazy flame looks like a candle flame, kinda dancing around slowly
now gently blow at the candle and the flame starts to dance wildly, that is what the flame should look like.
Hope this helps.

EDIT I should add
if it is really cold and your stove is having a hard time keeping up the temp,
switching it to stove temp is the equivelent of putting a wood burning stove on, it will jusst pump out a steady amount of BTU's.
I used to say
room temp= temp control like a central heating system.
stove temp=temp like a wood burning stove

Very good intel here. How is a draft test done? Do I need special equipment? I haven't taken the combustion motor off and cleaned it, I'll do it at the next cleaning. Right now it is working as it should with temps in the upper 20's. Still only getting 9-10 hrs of burn though. The pellet is the best hardwood pellet I've used. Can't afford to move to softwood as they are 25% more. My flapper works fine, actually the dealer bent the mount for it so it doesn't close all the way. Don't recall why.

 

[lessoil]

Our feed rate is at 4 and has been going on 3 yrs. (Per install Tech) This sets the max available feed.(I think)
Also, verify that the blades on the combustion fan are not caked with ash. (Located right behind the ash pan. But you knew that already)
Verify that no holes are plugged in the burn pot. I use a mirror and flashlight.
Lastly, remove front cover from burn pot. I gently vacuum the area under the igniter and also reach in with my hand to make sure I got it all.

Sorry if I duplicated any other suggestions!
BTW We love our P61!

Hope this helps!

 

[mascoma]

Reclean vent, all of it.
Clean combustion fan fins inside stove again.
Clean chamber under burn pot again, check for blockage here toward back of stove.
Clean OAK run if installed.

mode you are running stove in should not make a difference in quality of flame.

 

[lessoil]

Reclean vent, all of it.
Clean combustion fan fins inside stove again.
Clean chamber under burn pot again, check for blockage here toward back of stove.
Clean OAK run if installed.

mode you are running stove in should not make a difference in quality of flame.

Sorry! Removed comment about Mode in my post!!

 

[GVA]

Very good intel here. How is a draft test done? Do I need special equipment? I haven't taken the combustion motor off and cleaned it, I'll do it at the next cleaning. Right now it is working as it should with temps in the upper 20's. Still only getting 9-10 hrs of burn though. The pellet is the best hardwood pellet I've used. Can't afford to move to softwood as they are 25% more. My flapper works fine, actually the dealer bent the mount for it so it doesn't close all the way. Don't recall why.

Draft test requires a magnehelic gauge, there about $60 (made by dwyer), there are many different models you would want one that goes up to 1" WC.
And just a thought, pellet brands do vary from batch to batch or ton to ton. I would grab a bag or 2 of another pellet company just to see if the burn time per bag goes up,(back to normal).

 

[lbcynya]

Harman Feed Rate 101: The feed rate really has nothing to do with how the stove runs unless you are running it at near or full capacity or you are running from cold startup and are trying to warm up a very cold space. The feed rate you set is a MAX of what the stove will feed when it is required to feed pellets aggressively. As your manual states, the way to make sure you have the correct rate is to put it in stove temp mode, run it full blast for 30 minutes and the face of the ash should be about 1 inch from the top of the burn pot. If it is isn't you adjust feed rate up a little. If it is spilling over you adjust it down a little. Hope this helps.

+1 - Everyone seems to dial down the feed rate thinking that they'll save pellets. Folks, why did you buy an expensive stove with an ESP and you won't allow it to do the work for you... Think of the feed rate as the gas pedal in your car. The stove will determine how far to push the gas based on the heat setting you dial in with the temp knob. A feed rate of 2 is like putting a stick behind your gas pedal and the car will never get up to speed... Higher feed rates will also allow the stove to react quicker to temperature changes or heat requirements.

There's no magic between consuming pellets and producing heat. Easy math (numbers are made up to make a point) - If you need 16,000 BTU to maintain a room temp of 72* and the energy content of your pellets is 8000 BTU per pound, then you'll burn 2 pounds an hour to keep the room temp constant. A feed rate of 2 might only allow 1.0 pound of feeding per hour resulting in a 68 degree room. At that point you'll be thrilled that you get 40 hours from a bag of pellets, but you'll be disappointed that your heating appliance is not heating right.

As noted in a post above, you need to run the stove wide open (Stove temp 7, feed #3, fan high) for 30 minutes, check to see if you have 1" of ash (Harman mustache), if larger dial up to #4 and repeat for 30 minutes. Once you've found the sweet spot, don't touch the feed and only adjust temperature for comfort. Do this again if you change brands of pellets.

If you're pushing pellets over the edge of the burn pot at 2.5, then I would change pellets... High moisture content could contribute to this as well.

Hope this helps...

Edit - Saw you posted this:

I have been running about 3 and my ash is very close to the end and the burn is about 1.5" from the edge. I'll see what the switch to Stove temp does and then adjust the feed a bit. Good science (I teach elementary) says only adjust one thing at a time.

Pellets should fill the pot so there is only 1" between the burning pellets and the very edge of the burn pot. The inch before the edge of the pot will be ash and pellets that are essentially 99% burned. The ash line is "irrelevant", other than to provide a visual reference between the burning pellets and the edge of the pot.

 

[kayakmom]

We realized a problem that was causing the "same" type of heat output when changing the auger speed. It wasn't doing anything! When we turned off the pellet stove, it apparently allowed it to reset and now it makes a big difference when we change the auger speed. Running it on 4, we are able to keep our house warm and I can feel the difference standing in the room with it. When it was 30 outside, it would blow me out of the room, like people here said. Right now it is 12 outside and 64 inside upstairs. Excellent! With our previous settings, it would have been around 55 or so. Thanks to everyone for helping and thanks to OP for allowing me to go along for the ride in the thread.

 

[xjarcher]

Update,
I've been working on things and last night just before the storm hit I let it burn out and cleaned it. Did the Exhaust pipe and when I was there I found a (the) problem. The intake blower has a small channel around it that you can see when you pull that cover off. I remove the cover and vac the area every time but there was some build up in that channel. My 5hp shopvac wouldn't pull that stuff out so I wrecked a paint brush and removed it. Seems to be the ticket as it's burning quite strong. We are using pellets in 9 hrs but it's in the teens with a pretty stiff wind blowing right at the exhaust. We'll see about consumption when we see a temp near 30*F again. Probably in July

Not so bright question: What's OAK? other than a tree.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

...

Not so bright question: What's OAK? other than a tree.

Outside Air Kit